Huge Battle Brewing For This Position At Newcastle Next Season

There will be some battle in pre-season to decide who will be Newcastle’s starting goalkeeper next season between the returning Tim Krul, Karl Darlow and Rob Elliot.

We expect Matz Sels to be sold or loaned out for the season and certainly expect the impressive young 20 year-old Freddie Woodman, already an England U21 player, to be loaned out for the season and probably to a Championship club so he gets first team playing time.

To add to the competition Rafa Benitez has even shown signs he may want to bring in another goalkeeper this summer.

Rob Elliot – looking forward to playing Premier League football next season We covered a good interview earlier today with Tim Krul who definitely wants to stay at Newcastle, at least from what he says in the interview.

At the top of his form Tim can certainly become our number one goalkeeper next season and he does have lots of Premier League experience with Newcastle.

Both Tim and Rob Elliot are now recovered form the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries they picked up playing for the countries, Holland And Ireland respectively, the season before last and will fight it out with the impressive Karl Darlow in pre-season.

Karl has improved a lot since he arrived at the club to be part of the first team squad two years ago and he was great for us last season – and the 26 year-old is still improving.

Here’s quite a long interview Rob Elliot has given in ChronicleLive today:

“I think you’d be naive to say you are not looking just to stay up.” “You’ve got to look at that first and foremost before you even think about where you want to finish.”

“In my personal opinion, you get to 40 points as quick as you possibly can and then you look to see where you can finish.”

“But the manager is really big on just taking each game as it comes and I think that’s what we will do next year.”

“Hopefully it will just be a good season all around for the club, get some stability back and make sure we are in the Premier League again and go from there.”

“But then you start thinking after the Preston game (after we were officially promoted), it brought back all the memories of like the Manchester United games and the derbies and the Liverpool matches.”

“Every game is a massive game in the Premier League. Every game in the Premier League you know that you can get embarrassed very easily by the quality of players.”

“But as a player, you want to test yourself against the best and play against the best in the world every week.” “That’s where you want to be – playing in front of a big crowd at St James’ Park against the best players.”

“When we are doing well, there is no better place to be.” “You want to be in that environment every week and that’s what the Premier League means – that every week you are in that sort of atmosphere.”

“The atmosphere this year has just been amazing. Selling out the away end, has just been amazing.”

“Hopefully it will just keep growing and the connection between the fans, the players and the manager will just keep growing and taking us forward.”

“Going into next year we will have some tough games at home, so hopefully we can get that edge back with the atmosphere at the ground and that can help us get us over the line a few times.”

Elliot was brought in by Rafa Benitez with some good man-management to play the last three games of the season just to show him he is still part of Newcastle’s future.

From those performances Rob doesn’t seem to have lost anything from the season before last when he was our Player of the Season and outstanding.

One of Rob’s big attributes as a goalkeeper is his concentration – he’s always alert to any danger.

Rob’s been named in the provisional squad for the Republic of Ireland to play Uruguay and Mexico in friendlies next month and then an important World Cup Qualifier against Austria on June 11.

Let’s hope he makes the squad and gets a game.

It’s going to be a great summer and pre-season for Newcastle fans (we’ll make it so!) and one of the many things to look forward to, in addition to signing world-class players, is the tremulous battle that will take place for who will be the number one Newcastle goalkeeper next season.

13 comments so far

Difficult to know what Rafa will do about the keeper situation but logically Krul and Sels probably have the most selling potential. Again looking on nufc.com at their contract lengths Krul only has only 1 year left whereas the others have 3 or 4 years left and Elliot’s was recently renewed – maybe this is an indicator of Rafa’s thinking?

Don’t particularly like loans – but I think Rafa is going to have to get at least a couple of players on loan – as I don’t think there will be enough cash to pay for half a team of new arrivals. Needs must I suppose.

Personally, I would get what I could for Krul, Elliot, and Sels. Replace those 3 with 1 (good) experienced keeper, say over 30… which would minimise the transfer fee. With 1 very good senior keeper, that would leave Darlow and Woodman to break through, probably with one eye on Woodman being the next number 1.

You would have to expect the wages alone saved on Krul, Elliot, and Sels, would make the above idea financially viable.

Links to players seems to up’d a notch on quality today!! I’d like to see us sign a player of Carvalho’s abilities, you have to wonder why non of the big guns have never signed him though? But he’s certainly good enough for us! How did Sanches settle at Bayern? A cheeky loan move for him! Tammy would be a better acquisition than say Andre Gray, however the loan with no option to buy may not suit Rafa’s plan, but could allow other signings if only paying a low loan fee. On the GK subject…I’ve said before keep darlow and replace the rest with 1 amazing gk and maybe another cheap one to fill a gap! Someone give Zlatan a call see if he fancies 1 last swan song in the EPL with us!!! 🙂

I’d sell Krul. His distribution is a hindrance which can’t be afforded in the Premier League. Sels needs confidence which will come. Darlow and Elliot have proven themselves to be very capable. We have an excellent set of keepers at the moment.

ToonRich – Which amazing goalie is available to sign? Or at least who would you like us to get?

qtoon – I don’t think Krul’s distribution will be as much of a hindrance as previous years, I think we’re going to be playing football with far less long punts upfield. I think he’ll be our no.1 if we don’t sign anyone new

Always thought Gerónimo Rulli would become a class gk, I think Man City were looking at him last summer. Perhaps a fit Butland would fit the bill, I’m not sure? Donnarumma would be an obvious Amazing signing for years to come!!!

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Transfers Summer 2017

Player

Fee

Club

INCOMING

Christian Atsu

£6.2M

Chelsea

Florian Lejeune

£8.8M

Eibar

Jacob Murphy

£10M

Norwich

Javier Manquillo

£4.5M

Atletico Madrid

Mikel Merino

£2.5M Loan – season

Borussia Dortmund

Kenedy

Loan – season – pending

Chelsea

Joselu

£5.0M

Stoke City

Transfer Fees In

£37.0M

OUTGOING

Vurnon Anita

Released

Aston Villa

Sammy Ameobi

Released

Bolton

Haris Vuckic

Released

FC Twente

Lubo Satka

Released

FC DAC 1904

Florian Thauvin

£10.0M

Marseille

Kevin Mbabu

£1.0M

Young Boys

Matz Sels

Loan – season

Anderlecht

Yoan Gouffran

Released

Goztepe

Adam Armstrong

Loan – season

Bolton

Lewis Gibson

£1.0M Up to £5M in add-ons

Everton

Daryl Murphy

£2.0M

Nottingham Forest

Ivan Toney

Loan – season

Wigan Athletic

Transfer Fees Out

£14.0M

Net Spend

£23M

Preseason Friendlies 2017

Club

Location

Date

Hearts Won 2-1

Tynecastle

Friday 14th July 7:45pm

Preston Drew 1-1

Deepdale

Saturday 22nd July 3:00pm

Bradford Won 4-0

Valley Parade

Wednesday 26th July 7:30pm

Mainz 05 Lost 2-1

Opel Arena, Mainz

Saturday 29th July 4:00 pm local time

Wolfsburg Won 3-1

AOK Stadium, Wolfsburg

Wednesday 2nd August 4:00pm local time

Hellas Verona Wopn 2-0

St. James’ Park

Sunday 6th August 3:00pm

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